But now, Pittsburgh’s first tiny house has become a home. Roughly six weeks after 567 people lined up on a brisk January afternoon for an open house, the new owners signed the closing docs and got their keys.

The tiny house sold for $109,500, its asking price. Yet, as explained in a previous post on this blog, that’s well below its development costs. We’ve used the Tiny House Journal to document how building a tiny house in a city – on a vacant lot, in an urban environment – isn’t cheap. We ran into three main issues that doubled the development costs: making sure the site was prepared for a new foundation, connecting the home to the city’s separate public water and sewer systems, and ensuring the plans complied with the city’s zoning code. These are all good things. It means the tiny house is going to become a permanent part of the neighborhood. Generous grants from the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, Neighborhood Allies, and IKEA Pittsburgh allowed us to continue the Tiny House journey.

Still, we needed $100,000 for a construction loan. Typically, a bank would finance a construction loan. But since the Garfield Tiny House was the first one to be built in Pittsburgh, there are no comparable situations; since there are no comparable situations, there is no established market. This is a problem for most banks. For us though, that meant pulling off another first on our list of firsts. We turned to Small Change, a real estate crowdfunding platform, to crowdfund the construction loan.

And then it happened: construction commenced, we successfully crowdfunded the needed amount, the tiny house was completed, put on the market and sold! Precedent exists where it didn’t before. An established market is there for future developers.

All along, our goal in developing the tiny house was to turn eyes to Garfield, and to get people to recognize the neighborhood’s value. Our mission was to start a conversation that focused on Garfield as a place of opportunity, not liability, and to create a model for alternative, affordable housing. The tiny house drew a ton of public and media attention – some complimentary, some contrarian – but succeeded in getting people talking about the neighborhood, and establishing a market. And now, our partners at the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation are talking with us about other potential collaborations.

This tiny house project is over. Its new owners are making it their own. But because of this tiny house, there’s a blueprint for future development in Garfield and beyond. It’s poised to make a big impact for some time.

Pittsburgh. A city that’s supposed to be so slow to catch on to new ideas, there’s even an old joke about it. “When the world ends I want to be in Pittsburgh. Everything comes here 20 years late.”

That joke is old. Some of us have been thinking about a new Pittsburgh for a quite a while. We’ve banded together. We’ve lobbied. We’ve persuaded. We’ve funded. We’ve designed. We’ve built…a tiny house. So, the question: is Pittsburgh ready for a new idea, ready for tiny houses? We are.

Yesterday, on a bright January afternoon, we held our Tiny Open House. Our tiny door was opened wide and the people just kept on coming. We had some inkling that this might happen. Our friends at Uppercut Studios had made a short video trailer about the Tiny Open House and nearly 5000 people saw it on Facebook and over 600 viewed it on Vimeo. On Sunday morning, we opened the paper to see the Tiny Open House a front page article.

A tiny house is tiny, so we let people come inside in twos and threes and fours. Two leave; two go in. Three leave; three go in. We kept count. Every time someone stepped inside, we clicked. We passed the 100 count fairly early; and then, soon after, 200. After they’d been inside, they congregated in little groups outside watching and chatting. By the end of the event, we counted 567 visitors.

Mostly people came because they were curious. “We love the tiny house show on HGN. It’s so great to see a real one.” Others were thinking of building one of their own. “I’d really like to know how you do this.” Others were a little less sympathetic. “Where do we put the big furniture?”

The idea that got the most attention was the full basement. “Yes,” we said. “Full basement, concrete floor, eight-foot clearance. Not recommended for 10-foot people.”

Everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves. It was a curiously joyous crowd. It seemed apropos to start coming up with some brand new jokes.

You’ve been following our journal for a while now, and you’ve seen that it takes some effort to build a tiny house. Alas, it takes some money too. $191,000 to be exact.

Building a tiny home on a trailer is simple and cheap. But building a tiny house in a city, on a vacant lot, in an urban environment, is not. In a city, a tiny house can’t just float. It has to have a foundation and be tied into the public water and sewer system. These are good things. It means the tiny house is going to become a permanent part of the neighborhood. But…these are some of the issues and costs to consider.

Why is it so expensive to build this Tiny House?

In our journey to build a tiny house in Garfield, we ran into some serious stumbling blocks.

First, our site once had an abandoned home on it. When it was abandoned, the City simply collapsed the house into its basement. Now we’re in the process of digging all of that out to reach solid ground and build a new basement with a foundation under it. That costs a lot.

Next, the home that once stood on our site was tied into a sewer pipe at the rear of the property, as are all of the properties on that block. But now the City of Pittsburgh is under a federal court order to separate the storm and sewer drains. And so we must dig a whopping 12-foot deep trench to the other side of the street to tap into the water and sewer system, rebuild the street and pour a new sidewalk.

And finally, since our site is less than 1,500 s.f. we needed to apply for zoning variances in order to build on it. This increased our architectural costs. We needed to prepare a zoning variance application, attend the hearing, and revise plans accordingly.

These three issues added at least $50,000 to our development costs.

Curious about our other costs? Take a look:

(Note, if you are building a tiny house for yourself you won’t need to pay a developer fee or to market and sell the house and you’ll save another $15,000)

We know that the Tiny House does not have a market value of $191,000 in Garfield. In order to recoup our construction costs, we’ll need to sell the house for a minimum of $99,500. The remainder will be covered by our friends and partners at the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh and IKEA Pittsburgh.

It isn’t easy being the first of a kind. Like our generous partners though, we’re confident that this project will serve as a model to provide affordable housing in the city and act as an economic catalyst for the neighborhood. Once this vision is realized, here’s to hoping that some of those stumbling blocks crumble away for future projects.

Yesterday marked yet another milestone for Pittsburgh’s first Tiny House. With construction permits in hand, the Tiny House team held an on-site kickoff meeting, finalizing arrangements for breaking ground. Thanks to our partners and supporters like you, soon the site will be buzzing with construction as the Tiny House comes to life.

After review by the City’s Department of Zoning and Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections, a building permit has been issued for the Garfield Tiny House. With the permit in hand we are now free to start construction.

Picking up the building permit for the Garfield Tiny House today was a joyful moment. We’re celebrating today!

With a few more tweaks to our financing package, we’ll be able to break ground.

It has been quite a process to get to this point and it’s always nerve-wracking applying for a building permit. As I ride the elevator to the third floor of the Civic Building, I can’t shake the feeling that after all of this work we may still not reach our goal – permission to build the Tiny House.

When the elevator doors open, I begin the journey that the City of Pittsburgh refers to as applying for a building permit. First I turn left and head towards the zoning counter. This time I’m lucky and am able to walk straight up to the counter without waiting in line. I submit my completed occupancy application and answer a number of questions, such as “what’s the size of the deck?”, “what materials will be used for the pergola?” and “what are the overall dimensions of the house?”. When the questions are complete I’m given a receipt.

With receipt in hand I cross the hall towards the Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections (PLI). I visit the cashier on the way who takes the zoning receipt and creates a file for the project and gives me a second receipt.

With the second receipt in hand I enter PLI and line up at the submission counter on the left. When it’s my turn I submit two sets of construction documents, stamped with our architect’s seal, along with a completed application form and the paperwork I had received from the zoning desk and the second receipt from the cashier.

They give the drawings a number and enter us into the queue of other hopeful projects awaiting their fate. Then they hand me (yes, you guessed it) a THIRD receipt which I will have to bring back once the building permit is approved.

Typically a bank would finance the majority of a construction loan. But since the Garfield Tiny House is the first tiny house to be built in Pittsburgh, there are no comparables, and since there are no comparables, there is no established market. This is a problem for most banks. But it poses a challenge we are prepared to meet – and add another first to our list of firsts.

Say hello to Small Change, one of a new breed of equity crowdfunding platforms. Small Change will launch in a few short weeks with a crowdfunding campaign for the Tiny House. We’ll invite friends, family and YOU* to invest, have an ownership stake in and help build the Tiny House.

Your small change will help make real change.

*You’ll need to be an accredited investor to invest in the Tiny House. Look for unaccredited investment opportunities in the future. Sign up at smallchange.com to learn more.

]]>http://www.citylabpgh.org/9392/feed/0Tiny house jamboreehttp://www.citylabpgh.org/9368/
http://www.citylabpgh.org/9368/#respondWed, 27 May 2015 14:43:03 +0000http://www.citylabpgh.org/?p=9368
]]>http://www.citylabpgh.org/9368/feed/0What is tiny worth?http://www.citylabpgh.org/9354/
http://www.citylabpgh.org/9354/#respondMon, 18 May 2015 15:03:40 +0000http://www.citylabpgh.org/?p=9354Maybe you are wondering how we’ll determine the sales price of the Tiny House. This is a little tricky, because to date, no tiny houses have been built in Pittsburgh or in Garfield, so what is the Tiny House worth? But wait, you say, isn’t it worth the amount it cost to build? Not at all. It is worth what someone will pay for it, and what someone will pay for it is generally established through an appraisal.

An appraisal is a written estimate of a property’s market value. The bank that lends money to the eventual owner of the Tiny House, will only want to lend an amount that is in line with the existing market and the appraisal.

How does an appraiser establish the market value of the Tiny House (or in fact any house)? Since the house is not yet built, first they will review the construction drawings and the construction estimate to determine the quality of the construction. Second they review the value of the land. And third they will review comparable properties in the area. Since there are no tiny houses, in this instance comparable properties might include studio rentals where the comparison will be made between monthly rent installments versus the homeowner’s PITI (principal, interest, taxes and insurance) payments.

We’ll have an appraisal soon, thanks to a generous donation of this work by Integra Realty Resources (http://www.irr.com/About/Office.asp?RefItem=PittsburghPA. Thank you Integra!

Forty-five days after the zoning hearing, we have finally received the long-awaited decision.

If you recall, we had requested three variances. One was a code exception that was granted at the hearing – a request to eliminate the required off street parking space. That left us waiting for two decisions to be made:

permission to build on a lot that is less than 1,800 square feet and

permission to reduce the required fifteen foot rear yard setback to three feet.

The Tiny House has been approved and we are deliriously happy! And now we plod on to the next step -. the building permit. While we continue to finalize construction details, permitting and timeline, we are also finalizing the financing of our Tiny House, we hope to share that with you soon.

In March the Tiny House went before the Zoning Board of Adjustment. Architect Chad Chalmers presented our request for the three variances we need to build at 233 N. Atlantic Avenue. We requested the following variances:

A reduction in the minimum site requirement of 1800 s.f. (our site is only 1050 s.f.);

A waiver to require no off-street parking since our site is so small; and

A reduced rear yard setback, from fifteen feet down to three feet, so that we can maximize our use of the tiny site.

Our request for no off-street parking was granted at the hearing, since there is an exception in the code that permits this. The Zoning Board is required to make a decision within forty-five days regarding the remaining variance requests.

Although we need to wait for the Board’s decision, this has not slowed our progress. We’re continuing to gather pricing information, working with local contractors to come up with a final cost for our Tiny House. After we finalize the numbers we’ll be sharing that process with you.

Our upcoming zoning hearing is a very important day for us, because that will be the day we find out if we receive our site variances for the project. Our site is impossible to build on without these variances if we follow all of the current zoning code requirements. What problems have we encountered? Read on…

First, our site is less than 1,800 SF, which is the minimum permitted buildable lot size in the City of Pittsburgh.

Second, the setbacks. Front and rear setbacks are required to be fifteen feet each, and side setbacks are required to be five feet from the property line. But we can take some more lenient contextual setbacks, meaning if the neighbors did it, so can we. This reduces the side yard setbacks to only three feet and we don’t need a setback at all in the front.

Third, parking. The City of Pittsburgh requires one off-street parking space per dwelling unit. A standard parking space is ten feet wide by twenty feet deep. On a site that is only twenty-four feet wide by forty-three feet deep, that’s a lot of space to give up just to park a car. To make matters worse, the contextual front yard setback only applies to the structure and not the parking space, so the parking space is required to be set back fifteen feet from the sidewalk.

Are you confused yet? The resulting buildable area, if we were to follow the existing zoning codes, would look just like this

And so, in order to build our Tiny House we need to ask for the following variances:

The Garfield Tiny House continues to increase in popularity and has officially participated in its television debut! Our tiny house is all grown up. Investigative reporter Andy Sheehan of KDKA-TV aired a story about Garfield, and Pittsburgh’s first Tiny House. You can watch Andy and Eve here as they talk about the process to date, some of the roadblocks, and what this Tiny House is going to mean for Garfield. And even Mayor Peduto joins in. Thanks for watching, and stay tuned for more Tiny House.

]]>http://www.citylabpgh.org/9226/feed/2LOCATION HAS CHANGED!http://www.citylabpgh.org/9220/
http://www.citylabpgh.org/9220/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 16:10:33 +0000http://www.citylabpgh.org/?p=9220The community meeting tonight has been moved to the St. Maria Goretti Activities Center, located at Broad St. and N. Atlantic Ave. The meeting will be held on the lower level, with entry right off the parking lot on N. Atlantic Ave.
]]>http://www.citylabpgh.org/9220/feed/1Tiny Meetinghttp://www.citylabpgh.org/9193/
http://www.citylabpgh.org/9193/#respondThu, 12 Feb 2015 16:15:48 +0000http://www.citylabpgh.org/?p=9193As you may (or may not) know, the zoning hearing for our Tiny House in Garfield is fast approaching. Before the hearing we wanted to get the neighbors up to speed on what’s happening. We will be holding a community meeting at the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation Youth Development Center to discuss the project. This is an opportunity to learn about the project or follow up on the progress and give some input. Come and let us know what you think! More details regarding date, time and RSVP information are on the flier.
]]>http://www.citylabpgh.org/9193/feed/0Why the wheels came offhttp://www.citylabpgh.org/9169/
http://www.citylabpgh.org/9169/#respondTue, 27 Jan 2015 17:00:25 +0000http://www.citylabpgh.org/?p=9169

You might remember that the original plans for Minim show it built on a trailer. This is a very common way to construct a tiny house, but it is important to understand the laws where you intend to live. Your municipality might not let you have a tiny house on wheels and here in Pittsburgh, ours does not.

The City of Pittsburgh follows the International Residential (building) Code which states that “buildings and structures … shall be constructed to safely support all loads … The construction of buildings … shall result in a system that provides a complete load path…to the foundation.” If you really want to geek out, you can read more about this here.

Basically, this means that in Pittsburgh’s residential neighborhoods, like our small plot in Garfield, buildings are required to have a solid attachment to the ground to be considered structurally stable. Neither the International Residential Code nor the City of Pittsburgh considers a trailer with wheels to be a solid attachment to the ground.

So, what does this mean? This means that in the City of Pittsburgh the wheels are off.

Tiny House, Big Living, a new HGTV series, is looking for people about to begin their own tiny house adventure. You can be an architect, a designer, a builder, or just a regular person. All they ask is for passion, energy and a willingness to share your adventure with HGTV. Production begins soon!

You can find out more information here or contact chuling@orionentertainment.com.

Now that our new direction is set, it’s full speed ahead. Chad promises that construction drawings will be complete in ten days. We’ll put the house out to bid again and hope to have our first round of numbers back within a few weeks. Once we have finished bidding and value engineering, we’ll apply for a building permit and should have the process well underway by the time we have our zoning hearing in March. With zoning approval and permit in hand we’ll be ready to start.

At the same time, once the bidding is complete and the budget is finalized, we can begin the task of finding financing for the Garfield Tiny House.

Over the last month we’ve reconsidered a number of things, and I’m going to explain why.

Our goal was to build Minim without pursuing a variance of any kind. We wanted to show you how to build a tiny house in the simplest of ways. But last week we discovered that the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections will not permit us to build on our tiny, 1050 square foot site without applying for a variance. We had originally expected the site to be “grandfathered in” considering that it once had a house on it. Now the code requires a minimum lot size of 1,800 square feet and the City is going to hold us to it. Given that we have to apply for a variance anyway, we’ve decided to apply for several more, leading me to our redesign.

December brought winter, and a bunch of very expensive tiny house bids. There are a number of factors that we believe caused this. First, some of the larger contractors we approached simply can’t efficiently bid a tiny house. Our best approach will be to have two guys on site who build everything themselves, with a little help from a roofer, plumber and electrician. Second, Minim’s design separates out the kitchen and bathroom plumbing. This makes no difference on a trailer, but it makes a lot of difference on a building site. You need kitchen and bathroom plumbing backing onto each other to have the most cost effective solution. Third, we disliked the siting of Minim, lengthways along the site. In particular we thought its tiny elevation would not look good on the street. Fourth, using 170 square feet of our tiny 1,050 square foot site seems downright foolish. So we have redesigned our tiny house into a compact L-shape which hugs the back of the site. We’re planning a beautiful garden out front and the owner will park on the street. While we’ll keep some interior elements of the Minim design, we’re ready to call it The Garfield Tiny House instead.

Our zoning hearing is in March and we’ve applied for the following variances:

A reduced rear yard setback of 3 feet;

Waiver of the on-site parking requirement; and

Permission to build on a site that is smaller than 1,800 square feet.

Slowing down and changing direction has allowed us to develop a more attractive solution for our tiny site dilemma.

You might think that construction costs are all that we have to worry about. Not true. There are many and varied expenses that make up the cost of a development project, whether tiny or not. We’ll have to consider this entire checklist:

• The cost of the land;
• A survey;
• The Minim plans;
• Architect fees to help with zoning code compliance, permitting and contract administration;
• Site engineering;
• Permitting fees;
• Legal fees to purchase the land and sell the house;
• Title, recording fees and transfer taxes;
• Holding costs including property taxes, water, sewer and interest on a construction loan;
• Insurance;
• Earthwork;
• Concrete foundations;
• Utility hookup fees;
• A crushed gravel, paver or concrete driveway and a curb cut to the street;
• The house;
• Appliances, including stove, refrigerator, dishwasher and washer/drier;
• The deck and stairs; and
• Landscaping, including the removal of a very large tree at the corner of the site.

We’ll have to consider all of these before we set a sales price. Affordable is the goal. I’m going to sharpen my pencil now.

I’ve been silent I know. The timeline for the tiny house is far from tiny. Progress is creeping along.

About six weeks ago our construction drawings were completed. This set of drawings includes everything either a contractor or manufacturer needs to know in order to price the site work and the house itself and consists of:

Since the house is small, we decided to pick very good finishes, including beautiful tiles for the bathroom, lots of built-ins for storage, a gorgeous appliance package, high-quality windows, great light fixtures, a lovely wooden floor and even a bed. We’d like the house to be a perfect gem and wanted to see what we could afford. We sent the drawings to a manufacturer to price the house itself and also to a local contractor to price the foundation and site work. Alas, both were much too expensive. Rather than value engineer (reduce the quality of fixtures and finishes), we decided to send the drawings out again, this time for a bid from a group of smaller contractors, all who would build the house from ground up. Keep in mind that each contractor must get prices for not only the materials they will have to purchase, but also sub-contractors they will employ (such as electricians and plumbers), so it takes time to put a bid together.

And so we wait again.

]]>http://www.citylabpgh.org/9075/feed/0Shawn writes …http://www.citylabpgh.org/9033/
http://www.citylabpgh.org/9033/#respondMon, 13 Oct 2014 14:00:57 +0000http://www.citylabpgh.org/?p=9033 As an art director in the film industry, my job takes me from city to city. It’s been hard in the last few years to feel like I really belong anywhere. I walked away from my belongings and apartment in Los Angeles in late 2011, and since then had only been back for three to four weeks at a time before leaving again. Lots of life-altering events occurred in the fall of 2013 and at the beginning of 2014, I again found myself on the road in New Orleans for another movie. At this point, I had just decided I was over leases, rent, and not living in a space I was paying for so I put all of my stuff into a storage unit. I bought an SUV and stuffed into it only what I needed – clothes, some electronics, work gear, a few cooking supplies, and my wiener dog.

This life on the road taught me how to live small and I honestly forgot about that couch from Ikea I enjoyed changing the color of every few years or that useless shelf I bought to fill an empty corner of my LA living room. Still confused about where to go next in life and not sure where I wanted to end up, I came across an article a friend posted about a young couple who built a tiny home on wheels and went off the grid, free from a mortgage/rent. As someone who has quite the hefty student loan to pay back and probably would never be able to afford a house in LA until he was 45 anyhow… I quickly became obsessed and read everything I could get my hands on from e-books, to blogs, to store purchased items. I originally thought I’d buy a piece of land and build a little 500 sq ft home, though, after visiting a friend in Jackson, MS one weekend, I stepped inside one of his friends tiny homes on wheels that was only 14’ long and was hooked. I remembered spending time with my dad while he was working away in NC living in an RV and those tree houses my brothers and I spent a lot of time in as a kid… there was something special about those small little places… something I felt the near thirty year old in me needed.

My line of work has been one that luckily allows me to be around design daily. I can draft and draw myself, so the design phase took off quickly. My father was a builder / wood worker and had my brothers and I doing projects very frequently growing up – so I thought with a little refreshing, it would all come back. With each step of the way, the initial plans, the model, the render, etc – it all came in handy; preplanning was key. My show in NOLA was ending and I had just been hired on a show back here in Pittsburgh, so I decided to order a 20’ tiny home trailer and just go for it – building it in my late father’s garage. It seemed like the perfect place – he has every tool known to man, it’s a good scale, and it has allowed me to be spend weekends with my family and get closer with my middle brother. I decided to hire a moving company to bring all of my stuff back from LA and when it arrived, I invited my 19 year old cousin over whom had just bought a house and had nothing… I gave him 80% of what I owned – It felt liberating.

The build began in early August 2014 and will continue throughout the spring of 2015. I’ve decided that I need to take this adventure on my own with the occasional help of my brother or a friend. I remember having ambitions as a teenager that someday I wanted to build my own home and now I’m doing that. I will surely hire a hand or two for the over-my-head electric and plumbing work, but for the skills that are just a You-Tube link or a book read away… I’ll make my own attempt to keep it all relative.

What’s it going to take to ground Minim? Typically a structural engineer would design the size of footings, and test borings would be drilled to ensure that the footings are on solid ground. But because Minim is so small, and doesn’t weigh very much, we are going to take a simpler approach. We’ll assume a 2000 lb bearing capacity (which is very low), and set the house on poured spread footings that are three feet wide and one foot deep. Chad will draw a foundation plan and check it quickly with a structural engineer. Once the contractor has started digging, if we find unexpected conditions on site, we can always pour a little more concrete. We think this will prove to be more cost effective. Test borings could cost around $1000. Better to save that money for extra concrete if should we need it!

]]>http://www.citylabpgh.org/9016/feed/4Some changes are afoothttp://www.citylabpgh.org/9005/
http://www.citylabpgh.org/9005/#commentsMon, 25 Aug 2014 14:00:45 +0000http://www.citylabpgh.org/?p=9005Now that we have our survey, we’re going to finalize adjustments to the floor plan. The original Minim is twenty-two and a half feet long by eleven feet wide. We’re going to stretch ours a little bit (to maximize the space we have on our site) to a HUMONGOUS twenty-eight foot long by twelve feet wide. Our total square footage will be 336 square feet versus the 247.5 square feet of the original.

You might remember that we chose Scheme A -1 for our site plan. Here it is again …

And here is the original Minim plan.

We’re going to be making some changes to the original plan for a number of reasons. First, the increased size and the orientation of the house on the site will require some changes. And second, we heard some requests at our brainstorming sessions which we are going to heed. Changes will include:

• a deck
• french doors leading out onto the deck
• a window on the office platform, facing the street
• a pantry next to the kitchen, for added storage
• a washer/dryer
• a full range instead of a recreational vehicle model
• a separate shower in the bathroom
• a through the wall mini-split heating and cooling system

223 N.Atlantic Avenue is located in an R1-D-H zoning district, which stands for Single Unit Detached Residential High Density District, meaning that single family detached houses are permitted in this district. Each house must meet the following site development standards:

1) The minimum front setback must 15′, but the code also permits a contextual setback to match the neighboring houses, which are 0′ on N. Atlantic Avenue. (You are probably wondering what a “contextual” setback is. Section 925.06 B of the code addresses Contextual Front Setbacks. In a nutshell, the front setback is permitted to fall anywhere between the zoning code requirement of 15′ and the front setback on an adjacent lot, which is 0′ in this instance);
2) The minimum rear setback must be 15′;
3) The minimum side setback is 5′, but a contextual setback is allowed since the house next door has a 3′ setback as well;
4) The maximum height of a house must be 40′ and no more than three stories;
5) One off-street parking spot must be provided; and
6) One street tree must be planted for every 30 lineal foot of frontage. Since our frontage is less than 30′ and we have to fit a curb cut into that frontage as well, we are probably going to argue for no tree.

Once all these setbacks are applied, we have just enough space left over to build Minim!

Perhaps the most frequently asked question about building a tiny house in Pittsburgh is, can it have wheels? Section 906.02 of the Pittsburgh Zoning Code treats any structure built on a chassis which is transportable as a mobile home and mobile homes are not permitted in residential districts in the City of Pittsburgh.

So all you wanna-be tiny house dwellers, you will have to ground your tiny house in Pittsburgh.

This is what our survey looks like. It’s pretty much what we expected. We’ll use this to make sure we build Minim in exactly the right location within the boundaries of our lot. It shows us the exact location of the neighboring house. It also provides us with accurate topography along with locations for water and sewer, gas and electric hookups. The gas and water valves are at either corner of the lot and the closest utility pole is right across the street.